For applications in cleaning equipment with a water jets, it is common to apply tablets containing the cleaning agent, to be dissolved in the supplied rinsing water.
In comparison to powdered additives these are simpler to batch and handle and have the advantage of a compact structure, which is favorable for storage and transport.
However, a frequent problem with the use of tablets is a too small decay and release speed, which prevents sufficiently fast release of the active ingredients in the cleaning medium, particularly at the end of the procedure.
One reason for this is, that in production of sufficiently break-proof tablets high pressing powers use to be applied, which lead to a very compact structure.
The other one is, that due to decay of the surface area the dissolution of particle mass declines, so that the concentration of active agents in the solvent varies from high at the beginning to low at the end, thus forcing to convey an otherwise useless amount of water or solvent only to rinse out the rest of the tablet—which otherwise needs to be tediously removed.